


I See Things That Nobody Else Sees

by recklessweightless



Series: I'm a Goner [3]
Category: No Fandom, The Fosters (TV 2013)
Genre: Anorexia, Bulimia, Cheating, Child Neglect, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 05:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4949332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recklessweightless/pseuds/recklessweightless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of a broken girl growing up in a broken world.<br/>Or the life of Ellie Callaghan.<br/>(about an OC from I'm A Goner)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See Things That Nobody Else Sees

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Dollhouse and Sippy Cup, by Melanie Martinez. I love Ellie so much and thought she deserved her own story.

**_Picture, picture. Smile for the picture._ **

I was 6 when it started.

My mother stopped me at dinner once, while I was the middle of happily devouring a bowl of mac and cheese gold, rosy cheeks and bouncy blonde curls still unspoiled.

She pulled the fork from my little hand and frowned at me deeply.

Then snapped, “Eleanor, you need to stop eating so much. You’re getting fat.”

My face, perfectly happy and satisfied a moment before, dropped into a frown to mirror my mother’s and I looked sadly into the bowl.

My mother sighed.

“Just go play,” she said, waving her hand at me and shooing me away.

But I didn’t play. I stood in front of the floor length mirror situated in the corner of my large bedroom, holding my Barbie t-shirt up to my neck and examining my stomach from the side.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I was fat.

 

**_Mom, please wake up. Dad’s with a slut._ **

The dysfunction only begun there and got progressively worse.

As you can probably tell, my mother didn’t do a lot of raising when it came to her children. Instead, my older brother and I both had a nanny that mothered us while the woman who suffered through an hour-long scheduled C-section to birth us spent my father’s money at designer stores.

Our first nanny was Maria. She quit when I started talking. Said talking children were boring, she could only handle babies. Then came Eva. Eva was fired and cursed off the property when my mother caught her stealing jewelry.

The one who lasted the longest was Haley. She started when I was 5 and David was 8. Her problems started when I was 8.

It was a weekend in spring. My mother had passed out early, drunk on expensive red wine and my father was supposed to be working late. I was awake at 1 in the morning, walking on light and silent ballerina-trained feet to a large, empty kitchen.

My mother put me on a diet after the macaroni incident. Only salads and basic proteins and veggies. No carbs or sweets. So I stayed up until she was unconscious for the night and snuck my brother’s chips and candy to my bedroom.

However, this particular night led me to finding a not-quite-empty walk to the kitchen. When I reached the bottom of the staircase, the front door creaked open and my father came through, tripping over his own feet with my nanny’s face glued to his.

I ducked back up the stairs far enough so that I was out of sight but could still spy.

My father shoved Haley backwards onto the couch and was quickly on top of her, kissing her again. She was laughing, but glancing around the room awkwardly.

“What about the kids?” she whispered as he pulled her shirt off.

“They’re asleep!” my father answered her too loudly.

She still looked nervous, but let my father continue to remove her clothes.

I didn’t move. I don’t know why I didn’t, but it was like I was frozen in place, crouched in the shadows on the stairwell, watching my father and the closest thing I’d ever had to a mom grab at each other hungrily with reckless abandon.

It didn’t take long before they were naked and moaning, still sprawled out on the pure white couch. My eyes stayed, examining things I’d never seen before, not yet aware of what exactly was happening, but fully knowing that I wasn’t meant to be seeing whatever it was.

Haley continued as my nanny until I was 12 and my mother decided David and I no longer needed her.

I saw her sneak out through the backyard more than once after she was let go.

 

**_Pose with your brother. Won’t you be a good sister?_ **

Growing up, my brother was my best friend. He had to be. All of the kids at our private school were stuck up and spoiled nightmares and our parents barely knew we existed. We were each other’s lifelines.

That changed when I was 13. 

At the time, David was 16 and decided he didn’t want his little sister hanging around anymore. He promptly banned me from eating at his lunch table at school where he sat with a couple guys who appeared to have never showered and a girl with a permanent scowl on her face. When he was home, his bedroom door was locked and loud, screaming hard rock was pulsating through the door. I didn’t bother knocking. Even if he wanted to talk to me, I wouldn’t be heard over the bass.

So I resigned in my 14th year to having no friends for the rest of school.

When people would visit our house, my mother still forced David out of his room and made him staple a smile on. She never noticed his bloodshot eyes and shaking hands.

When I was 15 and David was 18, everything made sense. One night, I came home to flashing lights and sirens outside of my house and David being carried outside on a stretcher.

“What happened?” I screamed, running over to the scene and grabbing a paramedic’s arm.

He shook me off as David was placed into the back of the ambulance and frowned.

“Who are you, little girl?”

My expression shot daggers through him.

“I’m his sister, now tell me what the fuck happened.”

He looked a bit taken aback, but answered nonetheless.

“Drug overdose. We’re gonna do everything we can, but there may be nothing we can do.”

There wasn’t. David Callaghan died 2 hours later.

 

**_Throw on your dress and put on your doll faces._ **

Behind the scenes, my father was regularly fucking my nanny under our roof, my mother was always drunk, my brother was getting high on pills, and I was constantly reminded about how fat I was. But as soon as my mother’s socialite friends came to visit, we were the perfect family unit. Hard-working and devoted father, loving mother, all-American athlete brother, and beautiful and soft spoken sister.

Once, when I was 15, my mother decided to have a dinner party. She tucked a flask inside her cocktail dress, forced my brother into a button-up shirt and dress pants and told him not to speak because he was obviously high, made my father come home from “work” early, and put me into a dress just as tight and expensive as hers, frowning at me when I hit the downstairs floor.

“Ellie, have you been eating sugar again?” She walked closer and pinched the skin peeking out from under the hem of my dress. “You have cellulite.”

I bit my lip and tugged the dress down as far as it could go, silently telling myself not to eat dinner.

My mother’s friends arrived and we were all smiles. Everyone fussed over how tall David had gotten and ran their hand over my almost straight, dulling hair, saying I looked so beautiful and that I’ve lost weight. We sat down to dinner and my mother downed a glass of wine in the kitchen before pouring some for the guests plus David and I.

We sat at dinner, the women laughing and gossiping, the men complaining about work and their wives spending their money, David swallowing a pill with his wine, me slipping every bite of my food to our dog who always sat at my feet during meals, and my mother discretely pouring liquid from her flask into her wine glass.

Halfway through the meal, my mother leaned over to me and whispered, “Don’t eat anymore, you need to fit into your dance recital costume.”

 

**_Don’t let them see what goes down in the kitchen._ **

It wasn’t until I was 16 that I figured out why my mother cared so much about my looks. I looked at Haley and at other women I had seen my father flirt with and looked at my mother and saw that they were all skinnier than her.

Not that she was big. But they were smaller. I was her doll, there for her to poke and prod and dress up until I looked like what she could never look like.

We were in California, in the richest neighborhood in San Diego. The only thing that mattered was perception. And if my mother couldn’t be perceived as skinny and beautiful and sexy, then her daughter would.

Somewhere between age 8 and age 12, with the pressure of my mother forcing diets on me and my body changing and the constant comparison between me and the other girls in the neighborhood, I stopped sneaking food. I stuck to every diet my mother put me on, checking myself on the bathroom scale weekly to see how much weight I lost.

When I hit 14, I noticed that every diet could only do so much. I was still the largest girl in my ballet class. I couldn’t help but stare at the rolls on my stomach when I was in my leotard. So eating only what my mother deemed acceptable turned to eating nothing but one salad a day, the rest of the food on my plate being secretly dropped on the floor for Cassie, my toy poodle.

By the time I was 15, I started skipping meals altogether, Cassie getting all of my food. Some days I would let myself eat as little as possible. Never two days in a row, though. I was still too big. My mother still pointed out my rolls, my cellulite, my chubby cheeks. The scale still said I only lost 2 pounds in one week.

Food was for people who weren’t me. Eleanor Callaghan doesn’t deserve food. She’s still too fat, too gross for eyes to look at, all rolls and blubber when she does a grand jetté.

After David was gone, though, I had a breakdown. One night, I made my way into the kitchen in the silent house and dug out every bit of junk food hidden in the pantry. I took the collection and sat on the kitchen floor with it and started eating. I don’t know why. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain why. I just felt like I needed to eat and keep eating and keep eating until I could explode.

I wished I would explode. Exploded girls no longer have to worry about weight and diets and workouts and judgmental mothers. Exploded girls don’t have to breathe or exist.

When I had eaten more than I thought possible, I grabbed all of the trash and stuffed into the trash can in the side yard, then ran up the stairs, locking myself in the bathroom.

My finger was down my throat before I could blink and everything I had eaten was in the toilet and being flushed down the drain.

That was my first and only time binging. But it was far from my last time purging.

 

**_Blood still stains when the sheets are washed._ **

Age 16 and I was a far cry from little Ellie, who was first told she was getting fat. Blonde curls fell limp on my cheeks, their golden color dulled to almost gray. Rosie cheeks were hollowed out and pale, almost translucent, cheekbones jutting out at sharp angles. Little baby tummy was flat and empty, with rib bones shining through skin. I had gone from curves and waves to points and edges. I was almost scared I would cut someone if they tried to touch me.

And yet it was never enough. I still saw more fat, lurking under my arms, on the back of my thighs, in the curve of my back, on my ass, in my neck. I needed to be thinner.

David’s death was the final straw. Before, I would still eat occasionally. Before, I had never let drugs into my body, afraid they would cause mysterious weight gain. Before, my skin was clean.

The day after he died, I went into his bedroom and dug through every secret place until I found a stash of pills, setting one on my tongue and swallowing dry. I just wanted to understand what the big deal was, why he always took them.

One month later and I was searching for his dealer’s contact and buying my own. However, that habit only lasted for a couple months before I ended up in the hospital from an overdose. Apparently when you don’t eat, it doesn’t take much to overdose.

That was also my first stay at a mental hospital. They made me eat every day. When they let me out, I had gained 15 pounds. I threw up my first night home.

The next time I wanted to get high, I stopped myself. I told myself that it was either thin or high and thin always won.

After my hospital stay, my mother told me I was an idiot for trying to lose weight like that. I just need to stick to my diet and exercise more. The next day, when went prom dress shopping and I needed a size 6, my mother told me I was too fat again.

I didn’t eat that night.

After dinner, I escaped my bathroom and stood on the scale. When I saw the number, I connected my fist with the mirror and sent glass shattering. No one came running. No one even knew the mirror was broken until a full week later.

I stared at the glass shards lying in the porcelain sink and gripped my hand around one, letting out a breath when blood pooled in my palm. I then took the glass and started running it against the skin on my arm, smiling darkly as more blood started to flow.

 

**_Silly girl, with silly boys._ **

It’s clear that I have daddy issues. And mommy issues. And every other kind of issue there can be. It wasn’t until David’s death that my daddy issues became a problem, however.

A few days after, I found myself back at school and taking a seat at David’s old lunch table. The 3 people already there gave me an odd look but didn’t say a word. Everyone in the school had heard about what happened. They were all afraid to talk to me, afraid to say something wrong. I was an eggshell and they didn’t want to be the one to crack me.

So I sat and I flirted with all of them. The one thing I knew I had going for me is that boys liked me. And considering I hated my face, my body, and everything else, it was nice to have someone call me pretty or sexy.

Sam, one of the two boys, returned my flirting and after lunch, asked me to go out with him on Friday. I agreed and left, leaving a light kiss on his cheek, almost touching the corner of his mouth.

Friday came and Sam was picking me up in a used Honda from the 90s. My mother gazed through the front window with a disapproving glare. If he pulled up in a Ferrari, she would’ve given me condoms. She took a gulp from a flask and continued watching as we pulled out of the driveway.

We went to the movies and sat in the back row. About 30 minutes in, his arm was around me and he was kissing me. I let him, leaning into his kiss as he groped at my ass.

“You’re so sexy,” he whispered against my ear before slipping his hand in my shirt.

He continued to kiss me and bite at my neck and grab at my ass and my breasts throughout the rest of the movie. When it was over, he navigated me back to his car with his hand in my back pocket. In the car, he drove with his hand gripping my upper thigh.

He didn’t drive back to my house. He drove to a deserted area near the beach, surrounded by trees, and parked the car.

As soon as we were parked, he was kissing me again and pulling at my clothes. I let him pull my shirt off and he navigated us into the back seat, crushing my body with own and sucking on my neck roughly.

I had never had sex before. I had heard about it. Caught my brother watching porn and watched it myself out of curiosity. Seen my father and Haley do it before I knew what it was. Kissed boys and ran away. But that’s it.

However, Sam quickly had my jeans abandoned on the floor and was yanking off his own.

I kept silent as his lips connected with mine again, realizing what was happening and knowing it was the last thing I wanted. But I didn’t say anything. He was paying attention to me. Touching me. That must mean he thought I was pretty, right? My father had sex with the girls he thought were pretty. He had to think I was pretty.

He didn’t notice the sharp point of my hip bones under his hands or that you could trace every one of my ribs through my skin. Then he was inside of me and it hurt and tears were bristling at my eyes. I had heard it hurt the first time but heard other people say it didn’t have to. But this did.

He held his hands on my shoulders and shoved into me roughly again and again, either not noticing or choosing to ignore the sobs that shook my body.

After, he got dressed and drove me home, dropping me off with a quick kiss, a smirk, and a mumbled, “That was fun. We should do it again sometime.”

I went inside and showered for an hour, scrubbing at my skin that suddenly felt dirty and letting the water wash away the tears I couldn’t stop crying.

We never did it again. But the next weekend, I was out with someone else and the night ended almost the same, except I didn’t cry this time.

I lost track of how many guys it happened with for the rest of high school. It didn’t take long for word to get around that I was “easy” and it seemed everyone wanted a taste.

It wasn’t until I was 16, tipsy at a party and playing spin the bottle, that I kissed a girl. She smelled like strawberries and held my face gently when she kissed me. It felt like a spark lit up my whole body and I smiled after it was over, even though it was only part of a game.

That’s when I started to call myself bisexual.

After that news came out, boys decided it meant I was up for a threesome. I only agreed once, and only because I had a crush on the girl.

None of the boys ever noticed the cuts all over my arms. They only saw what they wanted to see. It wasn’t until I was in a strange bedroom with a boy and a girl sitting around me on a queen sized bed that anyone noticed.

That was the night of the proposed threesome. We were drinking and the guy was grabbing at both of us roughly, while the girl shot me apologetic smiles. Her name was Hannah and she was the most beautiful thing I thought I’d ever seen.

Soon enough, we were all fairly drunk and all half naked. Hannah kissed me and asked quietly if she could take my shirt off. I nodded at her with a shy smile and she did, looking down at my exposed torso while my shirt fell to the floor.

The boy started coming towards me, trying to pull me on top of him, but Hannah shoved him away.

“Kyle, stop!” She grabbed my hand and led me to the other side of the room. “Are you okay, Ellie?”

She looked down again and I crossed my arms over my stomach self-consciously.

“What, do I look fat or something?” I asked quietly.

She shook her head and gently wrapped her hands around my wrists.

“No, you looked starved. And…you have cuts all over your arms.”

I didn’t say anything. Just stared at her silently for a minute, vaguely registering Kyle cursing in the background and walking out of the room.

“I’m just worried that you’re hurting yourself,” Hannah said softly, ignoring that Kyle left. “You’re better than that. You don’t deserve it.”

That’s when I broke down crying.

I spent the rest of the night wrapped up in Hannah’s arms on her bedroom floor, crying until I had no more tears left to cry.

 

**_You got weights in your pocket when you go to the doctor._ **

After my first stay in a mental hospital, I was diagnosed anorexic and forced into weekly psychiatrist appointments, where they weighed me every trip.

The hospital didn’t inspire me to get better. It just made me worse. When my mother would keep an eye on me at meals, forcing me to eat instead of slipping the food to Cassie, I would throw up and cut after dinner.

All food that stayed in my body was fat that stuck on my body.

So I had to find a way to get through my weekly weigh-ins. The first few went okay, because I still had the weight from the hospital. My doctor noticed that I dropped a couple pounds, but let it go because she figured I was just adjusting to being home again.

However, when I was several pounds less the next week, my entire appointment was spent trying to get me to admit to not eating again. I stayed silent until I was threatened with another hospital stay. That’s when I admitted I might not have been eating as much as I should and agreed to do better.

Except I lied. The next week, I tied an old weight from my brother’s room around my body, tucking it into my jeans where it was disguised. My doctor didn’t question my weight.

Every week after that, I hid a weight or two somewhere on my body, and made everyone think I was getting better.

When really, I was still wasting away.

 

**_Kids are still depressed when you dress them up._ **

A few months after David died, my mother decided my family would be the poster family for anti-drug campaigns.

So we had professional film crews in our house, filming our bullshit stories about David and telling everyone to just say no. Then they took photos and we were on a city-wide poster campaign.

Every few weeks, someone would stop me on the street and say how sorry they were for my loss. I would nod and say a rehearsed speech, about how difficult it was, but how we’re getting through it as a family.

More bullshit. My mother was drunker than ever. My father was never home, probably out fucking a different girl every night. And I was letting boys fuck me in cars and bathrooms weekly and making more cuts in my skin daily.

Dressing us up and parading us around doesn’t make us a perfect family.

Everything just kept collapsing for a year, until I almost made it to graduation. Almost.

Only problem was, I had barely kept any food in my body for months. One day, I came home from school, locked myself in the bathroom, and pulled out a blade. I added a few more cuts on my skin, then cleaned and bandaged them quickly, used to the routine.

I went downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed a water bottle, noticing my mother sitting at the island, drinking down a shot.

“You need to go running, make sure you keep your weight down,” she said, slurring her words.

So I listened. I changed into work-out clothes and made my way onto the sidewalk, failing to notice that I was bleeding through my bandages.

I didn’t get very far before my head was spinning and my vision was spotty. I stopped running and leaned forward, placing my hands on my knees and trying to catch my breath. That’s when I saw the blood-soaked bandage on my arm.

Next thing I saw was the grass as my head hit it. Then black.

And that’s how I ended up in the middle of my second stay at a mental hospital. Still feeling fat and disgusting and not wanting to eat.

But also finding my first friend since David. In the form of a boy more broken than I was.

Connor Stevens.


End file.
